Gluten Free Pancake Fail!

Last night I was a little bit hungry, so I decided to make some crepes as a snack. Since I was with my boyfriend who is gluten intolerant, I was going to make the crepes gluten-free. I pulled out the recipe that we normally use (it can be found at the bottom of this post), only I decided to make one small substitution. Bet you can tell where this is going, right?

The recipe calls for brown rice flour, but I recently made Gluten Free Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies using coconut flour, so I figured that would be an appropriate and tasty substitution. Terrible idea. It turns out that coconut flour is highly absorbent to moisture so it should never be used as the sole source of flour in a recipe. Of course, I didn’t know this at the time, so I was caught completely off guard when the flour completely soaked up all of the liquid in my recipe and left me with a thick dough. Below I’ve included photos of the pancake batter using coconut flour, as well as what the pancake batter should look like when executed properly, with brown rice flour.

I wasn’t willing to give up just yet, so I added a ton of water to the mixture and attempted to fry it on the stove. The pancake looked almost normal up until I tried to flip it, at which point it completely fell apart. It took on a texture similar to that of scrambled eggs, and was completely beyond salvation.

My final hope was that the crumbly pancake would taste good, despite its unappetizing texture. Unfortunately, the coconut flour made the pancake taste very dense and gritty, and not at all like I expected. I was hoping for a sweet, coconut taste, but the combination of ingredients just wasn’t right. I found more information about coconut flour today after doing some research, I only wish I had found this website last night!

Needless to say, I had to discard the leftover pancake batter and start from scratch with the original recipe, using brown rice flour. In the end, the gluten free pancakes with brown rice flour turned out thin and delicious, just as they we supposed to. And, as promised, the tried and tested recipe can be found below.

Gluten-Free Pancakes

1/3 Cup Brown Rice Flour

1/2 Cup Milk or milk alternative (soy, rice milk, almond milk, etc.)

1 egg

1/2 tsp olive oil

1 tsp sugar

Pinch of salt

Combine the ingredients together and whisk until smooth. Cook them over medium-low heat until they begin to brown. Cover with maple syrup, Nutella, or any topping of your choice and enjoy! 🙂